


Knave of Hearts

by dorothy_notgale, Tromperie



Series: Grim Tales [7]
Category: Vampire Chronicles - Anne Rice
Genre: Anxiety, Bad Decisions, Ghosts, Infidelity, Lestat's daddy issues are everyone's problem, Loss of Control, M/M, Masochism, Not polyamory, Possession, Rating subject to change, Sadism, Selfishness, for the record i came up with that ending before Blood Communion, he's a sharer, he's fine, louis' kink is martyrdom, not bdsm, not that it needs to be run anyway, that requires people to know what the fuck they're doing, the court is dumb okay, which these idiots do not, who is running this court
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-16
Updated: 2019-01-22
Packaged: 2019-10-11 08:03:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 19,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17443049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dorothy_notgale/pseuds/dorothy_notgale, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tromperie/pseuds/Tromperie
Summary: As Lestat settles into his new role, stress and conflict arise unspoken between the members of the Vampire Court's golden couple. Each of them independently seeks aid from what seems like a kindred spirit, but extant tensions merely build, especially due to the continuing question of just what Amel is and how far his powers extend.And, of course, the seat of power is haunted by the ghosts of every mistake made in the past several centuries, be they tangible or just memory.





	1. Chapter 1

“Won’t you dance with us?” The speaker might as well have been anonymous, their pointed smile the same as every other that shone down on Benedict, here at Court. 

“Later, perhaps,” he smiled in return and begged their forgiveness. They left him relatively unsupervised, but he never felt truly alone.

Benedict had shown up prepared to throw himself at Lestat’s mercy, neck bowed and ready for the wicked bite of that great axe.  _ Please _ . But no punishment had come.

“This Court is a place for any of our number to find safety.” The radiant god-king had knelt before him and extended a hand. “I am happy to have you here, my friend.” 

The words had died in Benedict’s throat, his eyes searching the twin of the handsome face he’d stared down in a cluttered, stifling bathroom. He wondered what they said about him, about what had happened that night. He didn’t remember. Or rather, he remembered every action he’d taken--but the reasons  _ why _ were buried.

The smiles had been immediate and constant, no one even giving him the suspicious glances afforded to Armand and the other former members of the Children. On the contrary, the courtiers couldn’t contain their glee at the sight of him. 

“Did you tell Rhoshamandes, when you left?” asked one nameless face. “What did he say?”

“Did he beg you to stay?” pressed another. 

He would back away, shaking his head, and they believed him too overcome to answer. The questions receded somewhat, but the crowing became louder than ever. He heard it from the fringes of every room, the fainting couches where he settled himself. 

“Old Rhosh might as well lay outside and have done with it. Nobody’s interested in worshipping him now.” 

Yes, he had thought Rhoshamandes his God, the one who consigned Benedict to and then freed him from a subterranean Hell. He was fevered in his devotion, eyes so fixed on that light that everything else he looked at became correspondingly darker and more frightening. And like every true believer, he made for the most bitter atheist.

He’d stumbled out of that dark, underground prison intent on freeing his brethren, and the face of his once-tormentor had filled in the cracks where his faith had been. He’d thought himself a hero, a martyr, staying behind with the Devil and sure they would return for him. That God would not forsake him. He was wrong twice over. But now, separate from the guiding force of more than a millennium, the failures stung and pricked.

If Rhosh had protected him well enough, none of them would be where they were now.

_ Not even the Prince. _

Ghosts walked these corridors, unhallowed spirits and unhallowed flesh mixing, and his heart ached at times to see the blessed beauty covering over the ugliness. To hear everywhere music and the chatter, and nowhere to feel a knowing God besides that which looked out the eyes of a 200-year-old child and laughed.

The demon inside the Prince had sent Benedict out to start a fire, rather than a flood, and this ark was saved by beauty rather than virtue. The beasts stayed naturally two-by-two.

All but Benedict, that is. 

“May I sit with you?”

The question took him by surprise.

“I don’t make for fascinating company.”

“The charms of fascinating company have more limited capacity than they suppose.” And then the Prince’s Consort was sitting in the chair beside him, the two of them hidden away in a small alcove of books.

Benedict’s nerves sang more tightly than the violin in the ballroom (he thought, sometimes, that the music followed him into the hall, into his bed; but it must’ve been a dream). Even someone like him, the silly little daydreamer who wandered into the clutches of monsters, couldn’t have failed to notice the dark-haired vision ever at Lestat’s side. 

“Isn’t he with you?” Benedict prepared to make himself scarce.

“Meetings of the great and powerful,” the Consort, Louis, said. “I was invited, but I make a rather poor accessory--jewels never yawn in the midst of important speeches.” 

A surprised snort of laughter escaped Benedict. “It must be some spell. I sat for hours among manuscripts still as stone, but I find myself fidgeting here.” 

“It is all quite dire, of course.” There was a thick honey to the long ‘i,’ a little glimpse of somewhere else. “We must stay abreast of which lace is in fashion, lest we be caught dead in it.” 

“I’ve never been accustomed to choosing fashion, myself.” Benedict shifted a little awkwardly. “Not my interest.”  _ Or prerogative, _ though his Master’s human ghouls had always ensured that they looked appropriate to their ‘status,’ at least.

“Nor mine; I leave it to those who care.” Louis flicked almost irritably at the pearl-sewn cuffs that fell over his wrists to obscure the screen of a gold iPhone. A series of fast scrolls along a podcast aggregation app rolled past dozens of unlistened episodes of the program which hid Benjamin’s news. “What do you prefer?”

His eyes were startlingly green and luminous, fringed with long black lashes. Benedict had heard the Prince more than once ask that he cover up with dark glasses, as though to show them were some great immodesty. The dead Queen had had eyes like that, before Lestat slipped them round and solid and soft between his lips and swallowed like a snake stealing eggs, leaving the hollow sockets behind.

The question left him curiously at a loss. What  _ did _ interest him, and why did he continue to walk and talk and kill in the absence of the one who had assured him that he deserved it?

Rhosh had lied to him in so many ways.

“I--I’ve been reading,” he began weakly. “I’d fallen off it for some time, and books are so different now.”

“Lestat’s books? Or something less close to home?”

“Not those, yet. A little of everything.” In truth, he’d not cared to read the stories of ‘their people,’ whatever that suddenly meant after so long alone with only the society of his maker. “Besides that--I’m interested by words, but not sure where to start. It was much simpler to finish a library when I was alive.”

The ever-present mirrors reflected the stacks infinitely into labyrinths, and language itself had striven to leave him behind by becoming sleeker and more vibrant than could’ve been contained in the beauty of illuminated manuscripts. And its use--there was more  _ space _ , now, to fit thoughts without concern for pages or labor or instructional value.

The smallest spark lit behind Louis’ eyes, so briefly Benedict thought he might have imagined it. His voice, however, was cautious: “My own tastes are not exactly of the times. But I can share them with you, if you feel it might help.” 

“Yes.” Benedict said. “Yes, please. It would be a help.” Anything to set his mind to work and keep him away from the eyes and smiles and the terrible certainty that Rhosh would come for him any day. Or that he would not. 

“We’ll need to speak somewhere more quiet, then.” Louis stood, not extending his beringed hand but waiting patiently. And Benedict went.

With Louis, the libraries transformed from inscrutable sprawls to orderly storehouses. Benedict found that he had kept his taste for the sacred, even as he wandered in the dark--he lingered in the fourth-floor collection to familiarize himself with St. John of the Cross, then devoured Pagels and Eliade and Gonzolez, and all the rest who would have been heretics of his age. In their mad passion he found his own, reflected under thick glass. 

Sometimes the words frustrated him, angered him, asking always without doctrine or directive for payoff, but they muffled his more overt worries for a time.

“I left those questions behind some time ago,” was all Louis said when pressed about their creation, their creator. “My answers are my own.” 

He would say no more of it, but poetry dwelt in the East Tower to pick up the silence. Whole stacks of it, lifetimes of agonizingly chosen words committed in small type to moldering paper. The scholars he read on his own, but these he read with Louis, who would appear from unknown places and with unspoken thoughts bitten back on his tongue. His smile was often thin, but his words were rarely wasted. 

“But what does this one  _ mean?” _ Benedict asked more than once in a frustration, trying to wrest answers from pages full of fog. “It’s not clear.”

“I can’t tell you that,” Louis replied with horrific bluntness, turning the yellowed page of a slim volume called  _ Pale Fire. _ “Not everything has a moral lesson.” He would refuse to tutor, refuse to give solid answers. He teased and suggested, replying to every question of Benedict’s with three more of his own. There was something careful in how he avoided interpreting this new Scripture to one who would be an acolyte, given the chance. And yet he acquainted Benedict with such words, such images written spare and lush and broken. Such cruelties.

It irritated Benedict to have this worldly youngster play Socrates to him, and yet--truly, wasn’t he ignorant? He’d been shielded from so much, knowledge as well as suffering, and the tightness around Louis’ mouth when pressed suggested a history of both.

It was a wicked mouth at times, quirking and twitching when the Prince boasted pridefully, but it kept its counsel out among the rabble. Part of Benedict was stung when Louis’ eyes passed over him out there, performing his duties both as the charming companion and the reticent creature of fiction. Benedict had spent so long pouring his devotion into a willing--demanding--recipient, that to see it fall unwanted seemed wrong. 

Not that he didn’t make his attempts.

“Louis,” he said one night in the main salon, greatly daring in his approach of the golden pair. “You have deep knowledge on several subjects. Could I ask you some questions?”

Contrary to the intended effect, the  _ Prince’s _ eyes had fixed on Benedict, and he quickly learned that there were much worse things than being ignored.

“This book is going to be about all of us.” The Prince Call-Me-Lestat had cornered him in an unassuming hallway the next night, demanding his conversation. “And I realized, you were there too. You saw the worst of it. So it has to be you.”

“I don’t remember much,” Benedict mumbled at his sandals. His memories were a series of gruesome splashes, soaked in blood and illuminated by flame. Every one of his movements was clouded by a vague haze of shock. It was not the first time things had been so. 

Lestat waved a dismissive hand. “Whatever you can’t tell me I can read.” He grasped Benedict’s shoulders. “It’s for Amel’s sake, too. He wasn’t himself then. We have to figure out what happened.” Himself. The horrid creature that had stolen Benedict’s body out from under him. He began shivering uncontrollably, but Lestat went on speaking, seemingly unaware: “If he looks at your memories, they’ll be clearer. What goes in the book will be the real truth.”

“I don’t--”

“Consider it your contribution to our little court, eh? A sign of goodwill.” The tight grip morphed into a hard slap on his back and a laugh. “You did almost kill my son.”

Of course. Nothing ever came free.

Louis’ face held pity, but no assistance, when Benedict went to the Prince’s chamber.

It was not--what he feared. What he expected, almost, from such a noted libertine. No lips at his throat, no casual lordly use behind closed doors. It was much what Lestat had promised: questions, questions, questions, digging in and pulling Benedict’s heart out pulped and bloody, that mind hammering at his until his own memories became small and stupid, his motivations dulled into inconsequentiality.

“Smile,” Lestat said again and again, face madly friendly. “You’re being such a help. We all need this.”

Smile.

Smile.

_ Don’t cry. It’s disgusting. _

Stupid, stupid, frail Benedict felt his body tighten into knots as the words and thoughts ran away, frightened right out of his mind.

Louis’ face was pitying but bitter when Benedict emerged untouched, and then he felt a different fear. Suppose the Consort believed--what he had believed. Suppose Louis thought something had happened in there to violate his claim.

He did not weep, because it was weak, and disgusting, and he’d been told so often not to by the last one to actually touch him.

When Louis wasn’t to be found in any of the libraries over the next week, he tried to fix it as best he could. 

“It was only talk,” he blurted out the next time they crossed paths, other eyes looking to them and then quickly away when they realized just who was being discussed. 

“I’m quite aware.” Louis was looking at him with his mask still on, the cold frozen face that Benedict suddenly found unbearable. 

_ Don’t cry, _ Rhosh would have said.

He never intended, but something about him drew eyes. Stupid, foolish Benedict, caught by a mortal. Too useless for even the Children to bother recruiting. And then no one had wanted him but his God. “Please, don’t turn me out.” 

“You needn’t worry about that,” Louis said. “I have little sway or interest in that regard.” 

How to explain that it wasn’t truly the ruling that frightened him, that the doors and windows were being barred by prying eyes even as they stood talking.

The first red streak made its way down and dripped from his chin. It hit the hardwood floor with a soft  _ plash, _ spreading out starlike from the central point of impact. He imagined those little trails continuing to spread, worming out and attenuating themselves until they were invisible and yet everywhere, among them--

Louis’ hand on his shoulder was nearly rough, but his face reflected an uncharacteristic open concern when Benedict dared an upward glance.

Silken lips parted, a pinkish tongue darting out, and then Louis spun and left. His hair flew out in a black halo as he fled not so much from Benedict as from the eyes and whispers of the crowd.

The next night, the Prince sent a satisfied and knowing wink Benedict’s way, mirth twinkling in his eyes while Louis sat bolt upright and silent beside him, wafting faintly the only scent that mattered.

Seeing that, sensing it, Benedict felt unbearably alone. His unloved state transformed the vampires around him from glittering strangers into tall, wicked shadows that went on forever. He felt himself teetering dangerously close to a precipice in his mind, the thing that happened when he needed to act without hesitation. 

It hadn’t always been part of him--certainly if it had, their Prince would never have had the chance to exist. It had been some time after that terrible eternity, when he’d discovered that no amount of weeping or reasoning or pleading would save him from being opened up to his very core by Magnus’s strange hands. Hands that were welcome back at Court.

He didn’t like to think of that, the fear or the anger, and so he pushed it down, meditating instead before a labyrinth and ignoring the incongruous clicking of beads, the whispers of resentment he denied words.

And a few nights later, no point in counting how many or few in eternity, he heard a soft footfall outside the chamber (not cell) he’d been given.

It was young, that step--smoother than any human, but not the soundless perfection of one with even five centuries under their belt. Nor was it the empty, false replica of impact that the shades roaming the halls used to pretend at flesh. It held hesitancy, perhaps feigned but all the more curious for that, and so he pushed back the heavy curtains which protected his bed and ventured out, Dickinson abandoned on the pillows like a forsaken lover.

It surprised part of his mind, the part not already retreating behind his glass wall. The other part--who else would visit him like this, in the early hours of the night before the Prince arose, through still-darkened halls, barefoot as though that would help with the sneaking tread?

Eleni and Allessandra had no need. No one had any need, save for the Prince’s cold and haughty Consort, who like the Prince himself was so much younger than his hardened body and so much older than his unlined face.

“Louis.” He said it colorlessly, confirmation more than question, for if Louis had something to say surely he would say it, or retain his reticence for another hundred years.

“I’m sorry,” the smooth low voice came at last. “I did not intend to bring you discomfort, nor to be--discourteous. I have valued your acquaintanceship, and…” he trailed off, eyes flickering up in a testing way, and his feet carried him a step back from the threshold while a hand raised, nails sparkling like diamond and fingers naked of such gems. “I’ll go,” he whispered as his gesture begged.

How Benedict wished that he would simply say what he meant, rather than behaving like a book, all questions, hints, and guesses.

“You must think I’m stupid,” Benedict said. Louis flinched, but he wasn’t done. “That despite all the reading, I don’t understand you. I’m not who you wished for.” 

“I hadn’t--” 

It was done already, even though he was still moving. “If you tell me, I’ll be much better.” He grasped that soft, pale hand, a scholar’s not unlike his. “I take instruction well.”

“Dictation is hardly the same.” Louis was melting into his arms, the pretense going with him. “This isn’t what I intended.”

“You should go, then.” He didn’t release the other man. He wasn’t supposed to.

They stumbled backward to the safety of the bed and its thick curtains, the neglected volume falling to the carpet.

Benedict had had love, centuries of it. He’d had Rhosh, and early on (before the Children’s theft) he’d had those others Rhosh had chosen. But while he was not new to what they did in that bed, the discrete acts of it all--biting, touching, muffled sounds and careful touches--with each new partner it was a new dance, and Louis’ steps were by turns sweet and strange.

Louis  _ fell _ to him, for him, welcoming in a way that Benedict associated with his own conduct rather than that of a partner. He collapsed onto sumptuously useless bedclothes that warmed no one and nothing, but looked so rich. As Benedict rucked up his black alpaca sweater to expose belly and ribs he was suddenly taken out of himself, into a reversal of a thousand thousand familiar moments.

Louis’ eyelids crinkled like finest crepe, greywhite with a tracery of fractal violet veins between black brows and lashes. The eyeballs rolled beneath, distorting those silken lids with their side-to-side seeking nothing in the self-imposed darkness.

“Yes,” the Prince’s Beloved whispered in something like ecstasy. “Yes, please, Benedict. Do what you will.”

A request; nearly a command. Certainly nothing that could be taken as Benedict acting against wishes.

He muffled the assent with his own mouth, pressing down from above in an angle novel but exciting.

“Shh.”  _ Don’t cry, _ he nearly said, though where the impulse came from he couldn’t say. “Poor thing. Too much loved, perhaps?”

Louis twisted his face into the crook of his own arm then, muffling whatever he might have wanted to say. Obedient.

And pretty, so pretty, though still almost fully clothed. Useless, just like the wealth of blankets.

_ We could all walk about naked, _ Benedict thought idly in some far corner of his mind.  _ Like we had no sins at all--there’s no reason for this. _

No reason, but perhaps for the pleasure of taking it off. 

Louis was always so beautifully adorned. Benedict savored the feeling of soft fabric in his hands, wool and soft-spun cotton made with delicate care. By the time he’d removed the first layer to see what lay beneath, Louis’ skin was vibrating with tension. 

“This is…” Louis paused. “...not the torment I had hoped for.” 

Benedict’s laughter was uneasy, and the smile Louis gave him less than reassuring. But it was gone as soon as it had come. Instead, Louis wrapped his long arms around Benedict’s neck and drew him near, arching his back so that they were flush together. Cold, both of them. It spurred new tenderness in Benedict’s chest, tenderness at this brittle thing. He had tended to baby birds in the monastery, once upon a time. Rhoshamandes had crushed them in his fist, their little wings fallen to the ground. 

There was no little bird, no fluttering heartbeat in his hands now, but looking down he was reminded all the same. “I’ll care for you.” He stroked the tendons in Louis’ wrists and followed those touches with soft, sucking kisses. 

“You...” Louis fisted his hands in the discarded fabric of his shirt; Benedict could hear threads rending. “You’re too kind.” 

“Shouldn’t I be?” he whispered so close their lips brushed with each syllable.

Louis’ laugh was high-pitched, a wheezing jet of air that blasted over Benedict’s cheek like a draft in winter.

“What should be…” He trailed off then, rolling them both to the side with strength incommensurate to his years but still far less than would be necessary to move Benedict should he not will it. “You’re gentle.”

_ Gentle Benedict. _

_ Soft. Sweet _ .

He could play to that, as he always had, but it was so different when his partner gasped at his touch and ran tentative hands up his flank.

They kissed awhile, mouth-to-mouth delicately testing the edges of one another’s fangs, his head pillowed on one of Louis’ arms.

“You’re strange,” he replied at long last. “Look at me?”

It seemed some effort for Louis to open his perfect eyes, to play them over Benedict’s face; he wondered what that searing gaze read, between the lines and hidden phrases of his features.

“I shouldn’t,” Louis said after a moment, and then ducked himself down, down, pressing a trail of cold wet kisses to Benedict’s chest, his stomach, along his ribs and the length of his arm. 

“You told me--” he shivered “--to do as I will.” It was hard even to speak with the attention being paid to his forgotten form. Rhosh had been so quick to press him down and tear him open, reveling in his weakness. This…

A drop of red fell into Louis’ hair, vanishing almost instantly into his dark curls. It coursed through him as a shock. Those green eyes met Benedict’s, unsteady-wide. “Why?” His soft, voice trembled, but he hid it well. 

Louis’ hands came up to cup his face, holding him fast to his worst nightmare.

“I’m sorry--” he couldn’t run this time, not as Louis’ face neared his, as he prepared for the pain and the rending…

“There.” Louis’ tongue traveled the shameful red road. He shuddered, and Louis held him through it. “There’s no need to rush.” 

“You asked me…” 

“Another time.” Just as he said in their infuriating talks. That, of all things, fanned the smallest ember left in him, made him curl into that unknowable embrace. 

“Shall I go, then?” He looked little worse for wear--a failure. That word had taunted him all day, whispering in his ears from nowhere. A prophecy fulfilled, it seemed. 

That high, thready laugh came again:

“This is  _ your _ room.” And Louis’ hands were careful in Benedict’s curls, as was his kiss on Benedict’s cheek.

(It wasn’t his. Not really. It was Lestat’s, just like everything in this castle.)

(Just like the man in this bed.)

Louis pulled away, just slightly, and his face was serious though he didn’t meet Benedict’s eyes. “I can leave, if you would prefer it. This is not…” his mouth tightened.

“No--” Benedict tightened his grip, pulled Louis back flush chest-to-chest. “No, in that case, I would hate to be--inhospitable.”

Another of those soft smiles; a delicate hand along his own throat, glassy nails leaving red in their wake.  _ Let me help you. _ Maybe he said it aloud, wrapped up in the gasp that followed as Benedict fastened himself to the fount. He was starving, always starving. His age should’ve left him serene; he’d fasted in life and death. And yet, since he’d come here he’d been ravening. 

Louis left after, and he didn’t look back once. Yet somehow, Benedict had a sense that he wasn’t entirely alone. It was not quite a comfort. He opened the thin, modern door with its careful finish aping the ravages of time; though never truly dark, the halls were now subdued. Benedict saw a glimpse of dark hair, shoulder-length and wavy, vanish around a corner, but when he called out he received no answer. The quiet music of a violin threaded through from some far away wing of the castle.

 

~***~

 

There were nights where Lestat didn’t feel quite himself. It was nothing serious--that annoying quiver of his hand as Amel tried to throw another tantrum, a burning need that came from nothing and nowhere and plagued him until there was blood in his mouth and running down his face, the creeping suspicion that there were whispers around him always. It was nothing he couldn’t handle. 

Only. 

Louis wouldn’t look at him. That was good, smart; Lestat might’ve even insisted on it. It kept Amel from talking about those verdant eyes, a spasm twisting Lestat’s fingers in the ghost of a gouging motion. He’d sent Louis away before. 

“What’s the matter?” Louis, gentle simple Louis, had tried to grab his shoulder. “Can you hear me?”

“Out!” Lestat had been in a state then, his treacherous hands battering a priceless armoire to pieces. He hadn’t looked up from the violent work until he was alone. 

He hadn’t gone to court that night. He’d sat in his room, in the center of the wreckage, as still as Akasha. It had taken all his concentration to make sure nothing moved without his say-so.

_ You built all of this. You brought them together. This is all yours. You should see it.  _ His pinkie finger curled outward, making a little wave. 

Louis was so obedient in those times.

Louis was so obedient at all times, though. No difference.

The armoire had been full of Louis’ clothes. Lestat would buy more, from the shops he’d had stocked in town, from famed designers in Paris and little-known rising stars in New York. From the internet, when he could recall how to use it. (It was all so confusing, though he remembered being good at it once, skilled enough twenty-five years ago to hunt evil blood by way of electricity and cunning, back when Amel first whispered in his ear and made him long for a body of his own.)

The evil blood was unsatisfying, as always. His hand was still, but his mouth washed wet with saliva, and Amel hungered. It had to be Amel.

Why, why, was he so thirsty for innocent blood--why was it so hard to remember what he’d been taught and taught in turn to others?

Louis’s blood was--

Lestat wanted--

Oh, to drink, and drink, and not stop. To  _ finish _ his favorite, most sensuous, evil victim. He could never get enough, he sometimes feared.

He lowered his head onto their folded arms in weariness, feeling a hot, heavy press on the back of his neck. 

“Advice,” he said aloud, almost to himself.

Almost as conversation, though Amel’s seemingly wasn’t interested in answering.

So many had come to the Court since he’d opened its doors wide. So many more would come, now that he’d brought Gremt and even the erstwhile house of Rhoshamandes into the fold. He had held out his hand to his kidnapper, his killer; part of him had thought it seemed like time to welcome Magnus (another part, that morning, screamed at the injustice of it, the old raw rage that would never die, as he would never die, even til the ending of the world; that part was loudest in his unquiet sleep). 

But none of these were so comforting as the first voice that had truly aided him, torn him out of his sorrow and demanded more of him. What a comfort it had been, just for a few moments to be wanted. To hear that he too would be cherished and taught as the monks had done during one of the small, bright lights of his childhood. 

Marius. 

Marius would know what to do with him. 

The halls of his castle seemed enormous in moments like this, as if he were once again an aimless child dreaming violent dreams at the sight of his father’s bedroom. The newly painted walls looked strange and alien to him, clashing with old memories. He remembered this hall. This wasn’t what it was meant to look like. None of this was what he remembered. 

_ Where am I? _ He was alone, he was sure of it. He knew when Amel came and went. He knew when his thoughts were not his own (and they never were, hardly ever). There were two worlds layered on top of one another in his mind’s eye, competing for his attention. 

Alain Abelard had worked so hard to cover over everything rank, and vile, and true. He’d done just as Lestat asked, and Lestat must surely love him for it.

His fingers trembled, fighting him; he brought them back under control with an unyielding grip, banishing the old thoughts with a  _ crunch _ . The damage healed in moments, but the pain was clarifying. 

“Marius.” The Roman wasn’t in his rooms, wasn’t in the salon or on the grand dance floor. The door to the great hall with its long tables was shut, voices whispering unintelligibly behind it.

_ They’re plotting against you. _ Amel bedeviled Lestat’s confidence, but he knew it wasn’t true. They were making arguments, but it was pageantry without Lestat’s all-important say-so. If they convinced him, they who were wiser and more experienced and readier and steadier, he would acquiesce.

Or he wouldn’t. Just to show them, keep them in line. What’d he care?

He woke late these nights, so late, for he must protect the young ones tied to his body and choices. He woke late, and sometimes with blood already in his mouth, with clothing and bedding torn, the phone drained and the bed empty save for himself and not-himself.

Mirrors always showed so little, and strangely. So pale and sparkling, so familiar a face.

Like portals into another place. He was standing outside the council chamber, gazing at the glass within the “very accurate” scrolled gold-painted frame unlike anything that ever graced the Chateau before the Revolution.

The ripple of laughter without surprise made Lestat’s shoulders tighten under his red velvet coat, condescension galling. They expected to see him so, enraptured by his own blue-green eyes and red-gold hair.

They expected little from him.

“Good evening, Prince.” Seth nodded in greeting, and all the others followed suit. Lestat put on a broad, toothy grin and walked toward them with the slightest swagger.

“What have I missed?” 

“Very little, Lestat.” Marius got up to greet him, laying a reassuring hand on his arm. “Only the tedium of courtly details; charters and decrees for our new kingdom.” 

It did sound desperately dull, the kind of thing he’d dreaded most when they demanded he take command. “I’ll want to see it, if you’re planning on making changes.” 

“Of course.” Marius’ arm was around his shoulder guiding him away from the others. “You’ve made your position clear, and we our acceptance of it. You are our sovereign.” 

_ He wants you gone. You stand in the way of his control, like a perfectly irritating fool.  _

_ Shut up _ . Lestat closed the thought out.  _ SHUT UP. _ Lestat shoved Amel took himself and his warmth away,not begging but desperate for him to go into some other member of his great tentacled web. The spirit didn’t, but did back off enough that the release of tension was nearly unbearable. Lestat, nearly alone, stepped free of Marius’ touch before speaking. “I hoped to counsel with you in private.” 

One eyebrow on that perfect, stone face rose. The rest was stillness, facing away from the table.

“I would never deny you anything, Lestat.”

Liar. 

“I’ll meet you in your rooms when your business is finished, then.” He turned to go.

“You don’t want to sit with us? It would assuage your fears more quickly,” Marius offered.

He didn’t. But the members of his Council were looking at him again, waiting to see what he’d say. 

Marius’s hand on his neck was heavy, as Amel’s was hot. If he concentrated, or if he  _ didn’t, _ Lestat could imagine them as one living force pushing him down like a human man would, when none of them were that at all.

It had been so long--so long since he’d had that, a man to laughingly master and demand his love in that way. He trembled at the thought, picturing Alain Abelard’s hardened, nicked hands, hot and rough in a way not so different from Nicki’s knobby precision-honed ones.

No one demanded, not any more. No one even asked; they waited, waited for  _ him _ to act.

All but Marius, with his pen and his Latin. His legislation moved forward faster than Lestat’s stumbling, hindered steps could follow.

_ I don’t hinder. I help, you stupid dupe. _

“I can call a session later, Marius. But for now, I need to speak with you privately.” The other elders, the ones with millennia over Marius, exchanged glances at that, but they would accept it. They  _ had _ to accept Lestat’s choice of confidante--for what choices were left to them?

Rip out his brains and heart and accept Amel’s twitching, devilish presence inside their bodies as a friend?

“A… personal matter?” Marius’s raised eyebrow was pale gold, the color Lestat’s hair had gone when he was able to bathe in the sun.

_ You still could, you know. There’s nothing stopping you. _ How freeing it would be to damn them all and do it, show them he was truly unworthy of all their expectations so that they could finally let him be. But he’d be  _ truly _ alone, wouldn’t he? His most important heart would never survive such a thing.

_ Louis, dear Louis _ . He couldn’t survive without that stoic, retiring presence at his side. He would fade away into something other. 

Without prompting, he saw that piercing stare in his mind’s eye.  _ Where is he now? Where does he go?  _ Amel asked.

_ I’m not his keeper _ , Lestat snapped. He’d promised, never that. Never again. 

“I believe that’s a word I’ve heard enough of in my time,” Marius said, and it took all the power Lestat had left not to clasp his hands to his mouth. The others were studiously avoiding the scene now, suddenly struck by other important appointments. 

It was Marius who graciously led him away, who found a nook where no one would find them, where they would be swaddled in silk and brocade and bright gold. 

“How’ve you been doing?” Lestat said in a mock-casual attempt at composure.

It wasn’t exactly a secret that Marius was not himself these days. There was a darkness over him, a dangerous calm that brooked no questions and gave no answers, demanding everything carry on in perfect working order. But his companion, brave but maddened young Daniel, had crossed the ocean. And with him surely went Marius’ heart. 

“I am well enough,” Marius said. “But you and I both know that isn’t why you sought me out.” 

“You’re not supposed to be able to read my thoughts anymore.” Had he not been dead, he would have flushed. 

“It is hardly a supernatural gift to read you, my dear damndest creature.” Marius smiled, small and pointed. 

It hit true. Lestat had been an actor once, and now this.

_ Are you? Dear? He doesn’t love you like I do. _

His tongue was tied, clumsy with the desire to fight the voice inside his head, even though--nothing to fight, there. Amel loved him. Amel moved him.

“Well, in that case, I don’t need to tell you what’s wrong. I should let you guess, see where that gets you.” His necklaces jangled with the violence of his forced-casual shrug.

Marius’s face was solemn. Considering, weighing, as he weighed all things. As he’d weighed Lestat’s ability to choose a partner, long years past, and found it insufficient to allow truth to pass his lips.

“Do you consider this a game, Lestat?” Colorless voice, with strange Roman intonation, like the bones of all the languages Lestat had ever learned, overlaid by different flesh. “Is the continuation of our kind all just play to you?”

Marius had suffered for them. Had isolated himself, protecting them all from the merest hint of foolishness. Lestat saw it, there in his mind; long years sat still and icy, the only changes the flowers in the shrine and the way Marius chose to dress the body. The weight of trying to lift an unaccustomed hand, all just to tear away the tight, thick leather binding the neck--the feel of Marius’s thin Roman lips at that self-same spot, sucking them down and down, increasing by their loss--

_ Stop it! I don’t want to see that-- _

“I see.” Marius pried Lestat’s hands away from his ears, just this side of gently. 

“Do you?”  _ The vision? _ It was so lonely to be the only one. Their thoughts were so much. 

Marius nodded. “It weighs on you. Of course it would.” 

_ He’s a liar. He wants to take me away from you, to keep me for himself. He’ll throw you out when he’s done with you.  _

“Shut up, you insufferable worm!” As soon as the words were out, he froze. “I’m sorry, Marius, I didn’t mean you. You know I--” 

“Poor boy.” A hand cupped Lestat’s chin. “It’s been difficult, hasn’t it.” 

He melted into that touch. “Yes.” No mortal ears would have heard the admission. 

_ I’ll tear out his eyes _ . His traitor hand, already healed, resumed its frantic little spasms--this time clawing at air.  _ See how well he reads us then. _

“What is this?” Marius lifted Lestat’s arm by the wrist, observing it as he would a sculpture. Lestat saw his hand through fresh, horrified eyes, skittering little monster that it was. That was on his arm. That was on his body. That was his body. 

_ Our body. _

“I think I’m going mad.” He barely dared admit it to himself. Lestat was only meant to be mad in the way of rebels and outlaws, the kind that left you wondering what brave derring-do would come next. This was an unglamorous madness. And who knew it better than Marius. Who had kept Amel, offered so briefly to keep Lestat, better than this man? “I think I’m--”

Losing control. (It wasn’t Amel who stopped his mouth. It couldn’t be, not when Amel was his beloved friend.)

Marius’ face was closed, considering in that cold manner of his. Strange, that Lestat had once thought the remoteness emblematic of the truly old; having met so many more ancient than Marius, it seemed it was simply the old Roman’s way.

But then Marius’ face shifted smoothly into an expression of vague condolence.

“I confess, my son: this is somewhat beyond my ken. Never in all my years did it occur to me that this spirit would make of its host anything but a statue.” His arm was not warm, but hard and heavy about Lestat’s shoulders. “Your closeness to it has already afforded you much more in the way of freedom than any of its past bodies--or their keepers.”

“I’m not ungrateful!”

“You are never anything but,” he said. Then, to soften the blow: “I blame myself. You came to me seeking guidance, and I turned you out to the wild world. I thought it might temper you. But as always, you defy my expectations.”

“Isn’t it part of my charm?” Lestat tried to flash a winsome, roguish grin. 

“To a degree,” Marius agreed. “It has certainly won the love of all who gather here. But an untamed creature becomes a danger, given time.” 

Throw out a hip; let the jacket slide off one shoulder, fangs bared. Hide the tremble.  “Is this your way of saying you can no longer resist me, after throwing me out all those years ago?” His attempted suggestion was met with stern gravity.

“If what you fear is true, this is hardly the time for frivolity,” Marius said. 

“Who’s frivolous?” He struggled not to let the sting show. “You say you love me, and I’ve always adored you. Didn’t I trust you with everything?”

“Clearly not, or you would have trusted me all those years ago. You never accepted one word of my instruction when it mattered.”

Lestat sensed Amel about to say something sharp and useless, just enough to disturb his concentration, and he pushed the presence down with all his might. Because this was as unvarnished as Marius ever got: revealing himself in his pique and resentment.

“Your instruction was not… unwanted,” he began, drooping a bit but trying to find the way through. He’d never had a right answer with this man. “Perhaps I would have listened better, given a full chance at it.”

And here was his own bitterness, his own little tiff left to fester for centuries:  _ Maybe I wouldn’t have burned the world, if Marius had held me down and made love to me on that island long ago. _

_ Like he promised. _

“Oh, really? You would have accepted my discipline, brattish noble that you were?”

Lestat shoved his balled fists into the patch pockets of the jacket, feeling the soft velvet at his wrists like a caress, the back of his neck hot like his eyes, because he couldn’t bring himself to say, _ yes, if you’d loved me I wouldn’t have made my daughter or my lover or a revolution _ . Just jutted his jaw out mulishly and wished the pretty ugly thought were true.

“Well, I suppose we’ll never know now. Water under the bridge, hmm?” Marius turned away smoothly as a ship turning on glassy seas, his long hair undisturbed by the movement.

The distance between them was already stretching, miles in every single inch of restored stone. He could never bring this up again, would never get another chance. “What if I ordered you?” 

Marius stopped still. “I beg your pardon?”

_ Say anything. Whatever will make him stay _ . “You were the first to call me ‘prince’ all those years ago; you didn’t think it would lead this, did you? They’d give me power over you, now, if I wanted it.” 

He heard the click of stone teeth in the quiet hall. Marius’ feet made no sound as he stalked back.

“You wish to discard the indulgence I have shown you all these years, to be treated as I would one of my apprentices?”

There was a new iron in that voice that sent a thrill through Lestat’s dead chest. “Teach me,” he challenged. 

Marius stared, seeming to weigh him and find him wanting, but at last he nodded and said, “Come to my rooms tomorrow night. Dress properly.” 

Lestat went through the motions of that evening--killing, kissing, dancing--all colorless as he considered the electric invitation in his mind. Would it be more delicious to do as he was told, or to stare a direct order in the face and flout it, see what it brought him?

_ You’re a fool. You’ll debase yourself for a little attention, like a needy girl?  _

_ You’re only strengthening my conviction _ . A wicked little grin curled his mouth. He felt calmer already. He’d finally made a good decision in his godforsaken eternity. 

It hardly touched him that Louis was nowhere to be found; for the first time in months, it didn’t send him into an unsteady spiral not to have his dearest love at his side, or to fall down into his coffin hours before dawn even threatened to show its head. It was going to be alright. Marius was going to fix it. 


	2. Chapter 2

Benedict continued to read poetry and theology, though kept his own counsel on it now. And he continued to meet with the Consort in private, between-times. For (somewhat to his surprise) it was no one-time transgression.

Nor was it particularly frequent.

Sometimes Lestat and Louis would go for weeks joined at the hip, Louis reclining on couches with the air of one recently bled by the barber. The Prince was always solicitous of his kept man; always affectionate. And in those times Louis kept his eyes down, demure as a lady.

Being kept secret wasn’t the great hardship Benedict might’ve expected. Rather, it gave his nights shape; he had already grown used to waiting for the occasional visit with Louis in the libraries. The setting was different now, but the routine was similar. Louis would look at him with an air of immense distance, waiting for him to tease out some desired response. 

In seeming recompense for their ‘harmless friendship,’ Benedict was afforded certain shades of acceptance among the masses of the court. Nothing certain, nothing full--he was still untethered from his maker, after all--but his history became less fresh meat and more old hat, and he could for the most part slip in and out of the dances and concerts with little comment made.

There was still the silent watcher, as Benedict had begun to call him. He was now no stranger to ghosts, though he wasn’t sure he trusted them. And this one went unacknowledged at the balls, unseen in the long corridors. It was only there for Benedict, chuckling to itself and stepping neatly in his shadow. 

No one mentioned it, and so neither did he. His situation was a precarious one--certainly too much so to fall into madness, and so reignite the talk around his now-mundane presence. 

The only one perceptive enough, or maybe rude enough, to hint at any disapproval was Eleni’s friend, and she was unavoidable.

Perhaps it was unsurprising that the Prince’s mother would distrust the former lover of his former foe, but she was always civil, at least, however her cupid’s-bow lips thinned and eyes narrowed in his presence.

And for the most part, their friendship  _ was _ harmless. As innocent as before, with Louis coaxing him and reading with him; asking him questions about the workings of his faith which touched upon basics he’d never felt the need to even consider, which assumed strange mutations of understanding in the thousand years which separated them.

But once in a while, it was very harmful indeed.

Despite Louis’ intellect and skill with words, he seemed unable to articulate just what it was he required from Benedict. For so long, Benedict had not needed to think or work at learning a new pattern, though he began to guess. But needing to do so was infuriating.

Luckily, fury seemed to work better than guesses, in those small hours when Louis came in private, eluding his maker with the sun’s aid as no one should be able to do.

“Make me feel something,” Louis would whisper sometimes, beautiful face pillowed in his own arm after they’d already kissed and drunk their tender fill. A few times Benedict made the mistake of trying to make him feel  _ good _ ; but he soon learned better, and more was perhaps the pity. 

“Do you hate me?”, Louis said also. The words changed, but the sentiments were the same: a dark and somber thought clearly chewed to ribbons long before being given voice. 

“No!” Benedict had protested at the start. There was no reason to, with all the kindness heaped upon him.

Louis had looked so disappointed, his mouth flexing with great effort to conceal a flood of words. He’d left soon after, leaving Benedict bewildered. 

“I don’t understand,” he said the next time they met in private.

“It’s human nature, I think, to despise the things that cause us harm.” 

That raised a blush up his chest to his cheeks.

“We have somewhat different definitions, being what we are.” His eyes were drawn to the corner, where the watcher stood. It was the first time it had appeared in so close a space, with its bottomless black eyes smoking as it tilted its head. 

“That’s exactly my concern.” Louis batted distractedly at his own long hair, scowling when it fell into his face yet again. “There are things that ought to be truly, obviously loathsome, and none of us are moved. And every time, even the worst offenses grow a little easier to bear.” 

_ He comes around at last _ , the watcher remarked.

“I don’t--” Benedict said to both of them, feeling himself split between heaven and hell.

“See!” Louis snatched Benedict’s hand and used the nails like tools to tear fresh marks across his chest. His expression never faltered. “This would have terrified me, once. The pain, or the hunger. But now I feel nothing. And here…” The wounds had already closed, leaving only mouthwatering painted stripes behind.

“But you’ve done nothing to me.” 

“I knew what Lestat would ask you.” Louis had such a reasonable voice. Soft. Even. “I suggested it.” 

“Why?” Those long horrible hours, the questions that had left him a wreck after.

_ Because he is evil. The shadow in the light Lestat loves so well.  _

“Because I was lonely. And I wanted to comfort you.” Louis smiled. “You see? I would never have done such a thing a century---no, a year ago. It would have been ghastly even to hear.”

“You’re doing a very poor job of getting what you want, then,” Benedict said distantly, feeling again some of that protective cold he’d hated and been saved by.

“There you go, believing me. Don’t you know I’m a liar, according to all the books?”

“Hang the books,” Benedict had said, trying to cling to the crumbling idea of a connection whose words were not gospel, a leader who eschewed truth. “I trust you!”

“You  _ shouldn’t!” _ Louis’ face had been very nearly ugly then, though it bore yet the eerily perfect bone structure and smooth textures which defined him. It was wretchedness that made things unappealing, the pathetic becoming the disgusting as contempt grew. “I’ve betrayed everyone who ever did, you foo--”

It was a curious thing, to see a partner’s long neck snap back, their head crash onto the pillow with the impact of his own hand. Louis was strong from the blood of the Queen and the Demon filtered through his maker-lover, but not strong with the weight of time itself like Benedict.

“Please leave,” Benedict had said, strangely trusting, still, that this supposed viper wouldn’t strike him for his rejection. But nothing, just like the other times. Just Louis silently straightening his hair and gathering his clothes, and then Benedict alone.

Almost.

_ What a pitiful wretch _ , the watcher scoffed, ignoring that the dismissal had been for both of them (though he knew; Benedict was sure of that).  _ If you wanted to wound him, you’d only need to ignore him. No wonder he’s the one Lestat chose.  _

Benedict had heard that spirits could craft themselves as they chose; this creature looked like a haunting from Bosch. He smoked as he moved, leaving acrid trails behind. His hands were gnarled and curled, broken again and again and scarred at the wrists. His hair was lustrous, bound by a ribbon, and beneath an escaping curl his pupils burned with Hell’s light. 

“Is there something you wish of me?” Benedict extended his courtesy, for he had nothing else to offer. 

_ Misery, evil. The things you know we’re meant for _ . He leaned casually against the books, which did not burn. _ They all know it, however Lestat dresses it with his idiot ideas.  _

“I can do nothing for you.” He was shivering, remembering the night of bloodshed that had last come of a spirit whispering in his ear. 

_ We both know you can.  _

 

~*~*~*~

 

For all their evils towards one another, the injuries healed, and Louis returned when he would and departed at Benedict’s slightest request.

He trusted, too, that Louis would return, and that he would never ask too much. The latter was often strained. 

Benedict’s hands were no longer enough after that first strike. Louis would press him to be harsher, to spill blood across the bedding not for pleasure but for its own sake. He would ask questions, too, things with no good answer, inviting only condemnation. 

He’d seen this before--Benedict wasn’t quite so naive as all that. Other monks had favored scourging, beating themselves raw to lessen the weight of their sins and reach for some glimpse of enlightenment. It had horrified him then, when the mere sight of blood would make him sick. Perhaps they did change. 

But unlike the thickly scarred brethren, no marks remained on Louis’ skin, and that allowed Benedict to release the memories of just what he did when the most valuable creature in the court wanted to become dust. 

He learned that Louis’ long, smooth, bone-white incorruptible body would serve him and please him, keep him from the pains of loneliness, in exchange for only the worst of his treatment.

And if Benedict did not give it willingly, well.

Then came the barbs.

“I shouldn’t have expected much from you, eternal sheep that you were made--” Louis’ fangs tore entirely through his lips and sliced the back of Benedict’s hand, that time. The admixture of their blood set his coquettish lashes fluttering and his too-human breath thready even as Benedict fisted his hair for a better angle on the next blow.

He had a way of finding the things Benedict had never been angry about before, and prodding them to conflagration.

And later still, after Benedict had cracked with some small rage and struck his hand across Louis’ face or pressed his nails into that smooth back, would come confidences strange and nonsensical, whispered into the diminishing space between their naked and bloody bodies.

(“I don’t feel pain, sometimes. I’m alone.”)

That was, at least in part, what made it easier for Benedict to do what he wanted, when Louis did bother to tear himself away.

For Benedict had no lover, no God nor man to cherish him. None but Louis, who always began their clandestine meetings with the gentlest of caresses, the utmost care for Benedict’s body. And his body confused his heart.

Such soft ecstatic kisses, such playful smiles. Tickled ribs and cooed endearments. It felt like being loved, but then.

Then, after Benedict was sated, Louis would demand his share, and it grew too easy to give it.

Benedict had never felt anger, nor resentment, in his years with Rhosh. It would’ve been unthinkable--he was happy, or he was numb until he could feel so again. And jealousy was for the weak.

But Louis’ stubborn refusal simply to be  _ happy _ with his lot--

It curdled something, deep inside. It sharpened his tongue and hardened his fists, and he hated how well they fit together at those times.

His watchful shadow had lurked nearby since that disjointed conversation, but he said nothing now. Only smiled knowingly. And Benedict felt a correspondingly deep despair take root in his breast.

Perhaps it was terrible to be kept, but it was worse by far to be abandoned. He knew how they spoke about him--or rather, about his former owner.

“He’s right over there, didn’t you see? He came to us.”

“Rhoshamandes is less than nothing now. He can’t even keep one follower in line.”

“Have you ever heard something so pathetic?”

They never spoke of him as Benedict, lover of books, mourner of the lost. He was Rhoshamandes’ unruly, escaped fledgling. The fool who had allowed himself to be captured by a mortal and let mortals escape. Benedict, patron saint of idiots. 

“Why do you stay?” he asked once.

“I must.” Those eyes, vivid as they were coveted, looked elsewhere. Always anywhere but at him. 

“Why are you unhappy, then?” He captured Louis’ face between his hands, forcing his attention. “Why, when you are loved and wanted?” 

“I’ve had my fill of being wanted,” Louis said. “It’s never brought me joy.” 

“Liar.” Always, always. He tightened his grip, feeling the thick hardness of the skull beneath groan and strain. “I know. I know what you really mean.” 

“Oh?” The word barely made it out between gritted teeth. 

It would be too easy to crush him, to turn that beautiful face into pulp and meat. But then the answers would stop, and the voice. Then he would be even more alone.

_ Except for me, innocent boy. Would you weep for witches? _

“Do you know what would happen to me, if I went back?” He left strings of bruises over and over again, trying to make some permanent mark, but the palimpsest was scraped fresh each time. 

“No.” Still as death. 

Saint Benedict, who abhorred violence. Who wept for the victims of the purge. Who shrank in terror from death. He reached for the place inside that would protect him, and found nothing but more bloody rawness. He matched it point for point, his insides to Louis’ out. Gnarled, broken hands clenched transparent overtop his own, imperceptible yet branding.

“Nothing.” He imagined walking into that island fortress like he’d never left. “We would never speak of it. I would never speak to you, or them, or anyone else. He would fill my empty head with his thoughts, and none of you would ever suspect I had taken any secrets away with me.” 

“And he would suffer for the slights, regardless.”

He hated when Louis turned that perception on him, and read him correctly. Hated it enough to press harder, flesh like wet clay.

He wouldn’t be doing this if Louis hadn’t been able to see it in him somewhere to start with.

 

~*~*~*~

 

Lestat chose his best clothes: black silk and ruffles, a cravat at his throat and a gold-embroidered coat; high boots and all his finery, his curls brushed out over his shoulders. Wasn’t this the highest glory of his age, a look befitting a prince?

Louis had already fed that evening, during those hours he was free to roam as Lestat was not--so strange a reversal of fortune, that, from what they once were. Louis had the languid, rolling way that so often came to him of late after a drink of evil blood, different than the constant tension of his more random years.

Unsteady, almost, as Lestat saw him moving across the ballroom floor. Pale and pretty; Lestat’s hand shook at the sight of him dancing with Gabrielle, letting her lead.

_ See. See Louis? He loves you. You should go to him; I like to see him with you. _

Luckily or unluckily, Amel was a fickle creature, easily bored by nightly tedium, and so Lestat waited until the heat of his presence (coiled around the root of his brain like a parasite--) departed for some more distant, more interesting body. And then, alone at last, Lestat turned and slipped away into the mirror-lined hallways, heels clicking on the meticulously polished floors. The Chateau’s “restoration” was of all times and no times, an artwork of atmosphere rather than era; anachronism was permitted and encouraged so long as it conveyed a sense of what should have been and what the future would be.

What Lestat and his Court would make it.

He wondered what it would make of him. Here, perhaps, was a way to find out.

Coming upon the door to Marius’ room, he hesitated. By rights he should simply walk in without notice, but. Given what he’d requested…

He was still standing there, considering whether to rap with his signet, when the door swung open with the power of an ancient mind.

“Come.” Marius was seated at his desk in his usual attire, his back tall and straight as he looked over a document--how old-fashioned, how charming, compared to the rose-gold gadget sitting in Lestat’s room. There was something so comforting about his constancy through the ages. Lestat got the feeling that centuries hence, Marius would be just the same. “I’ve been waiting for you.” 

“I know. I was held up.” So many hungry eyes yearning for a moment of his time, a lock of his hair, his very presence, a moment away from simply tearing into him and feasting--

“--stat!” In the space between seconds Marius had come to his side; his strong hands were holding Lestat steady, and now led him over to sit on the edge of the bed. His sternness was not gone but shifted into an embrace that brooked no disobedience. “I think you’d better tell me everything.” 

“That wasn’t him. He isn’t here.” Even now, without the telltale heat at the back of his neck that told him he wasn’t alone, something in him jumped to defend his passenger. His companion. His  _ love. _ “I’ve just found myself dreaming, even while I’m awake.” 

“You’re certain we’re alone?” Marius asked. 

Lestat scoffed. “ _ Yes _ . How many times do I have to tell everyone that I know when he’s here and when he isn’t? He can’t hide from me. He could be looking through  _ your _ eyes, maybe, but not mine.”

“I can’t help you if you fight me.” The rebuke was softened as Marius pulled him closer, nearly into his lap.

Shame blossomed in his gut, but the groan he stifled was more than that. “I’m sorry, Marius.”

“You’re precious to me; I hate to see you like this.” Fingers lightly brushing his jaw, refusing to touch more. It was torture, innocent though it must have been. “But that rebelliousness is precisely what put you in this situation. For good, yes; but for ill, too, in such excess.” 

“I don’t deserve to complain,” he confessed. “Haven’t I got it made? But sometimes--there’s a pressure, and it confuses me…”

“Ah, my boy. You were never made for a leader, were you?” Marius’ chin rested on the crown of Lestat’s head, weighty and real. His red wool robes smelled of candle wax.

Harnessing all the self-control he possessed, Lestat pulled back.

“People follow me gladly. I’m not some useless bumpkin, Marius. And I do things nobody else is  _ willing _ to do.” Let that not be bitterness he heard in his own voice.

“You made a sacrifice which turned out to be far less than we all expected, true. You must at least be grateful still to be walking.” Marius looked into Lestat’s face, but it seemed remote, like being looked at or through. He brushed Lestat’s disarranged curls behind his ears, composing him. “I feared…”

“What?” Lestat said into the stretching silence, and Marius blinked, face closing up like a fan.

“Nothing. Nothing to worry about now.”

“I’m not a child.” But then, he hadn’t been all those years ago, either; and looking back, he cringed at his own foolhardiness. “You can tell me your worries.” 

“There’s no need--” 

Lestat grasped that cool, reassuring hand and pulled it back toward his face, nuzzling against it. “A prince should bear the burden of all his subjects’ woes,” he said. “You want me to grow up; let me start with this.” 

“Ah, there’s the boy I so dearly wanted by my side.” At last, Marius smiled. “How proud I am of you.” 

The sun couldn’t have been more radiant than Lestat’s face. He tried not to lose ground. “You’re stalling for time,  _ advisor _ .” 

“I suppose there’s no use avoiding it now.” Very slowly, as if afraid Lestat would bolt, Marius said, “When you took Amel into yourself, I was afraid I had seen the last of your dear face as I remembered it--wicked and vibrant and alive. Of all of us, I think I know best what it means for one of our kind to bear the source.”

“Oh.” The thought had never even crossed his mind. Those nights he had walked across the sands of Egypt, trembling at the sight of ageless statues--how different a man he was now. 

“I resolved that I wouldn’t abandon you, regardless of the cost. I would allow no one else to see to your safety.” 

“You’ve made no secret of your anger at being the only Keeper for all those years.” It didn’t match up with the pride in Marius’ voice, the secrecy of his movements; but then, there was so much Lestat still didn’t know about this man. 

“This would be no ordinary appointment. For you, my beloved, I would again shackle myself to the dark.” Marius paused. “And I remain steadfast in that vow, even now.” 

“You would… Keep me?” It was beautiful, noble...and yet Lestat felt a sudden lance of both fear and desire deep in his chest; his arm, his body, shook at the intensity of some memories not his own, not inside him and yet echoing through.

_ “Don’t suffer,” Akasha had said. “I love him still.” _

Since the time of Christ, Marius had been the one to safeguard them all, and he’d done it by way of secrecy, gentleness, and ritual. He had dressed their bodies and fed them once or twice a year, curated evil victims so there was no risk of spending their lust on the innocent. He had--

Lestat could see it: himself in a vault far from it all, no decisions or worries as he grew more cold and more still, as he concentrated utterly on containing those awful shivers in his hands, those awful thoughts in his head. It would be like the Chapel in New York. He’d practically auditioned for this role, and Louis would be there with them as he’d been then, enshrined on a throne of his own in gold buttons and a gentle smile--

He groaned and pressed his forearms to his temples.

Marius’ hand made small, gentle circles on Lestat’s back. “For one so daring, your fears run deep.” 

“I never told anyone.” Had he said now? Was he speaking aloud again? He couldn’t remember. He must’ve, for Marius had promised not to read his thoughts without asking.

“Except the whole world,” Marius said. “Everyone knows your little books; but few, I think, understand them.” 

No one had ever understood him like this man. Louis was patient with him, and steadfast, the anchor of his heart; Armand raised fire in him in dark times, and David steadied him. Gabrielle was the counterweight to his ambitions. But it must be Marius who truly knew him down to the core.

He hid his face against Marius’ chest, breathing deep and imagining there was some intrinsic smell. The incense of the tomb, or ink and parchment. In truth, they smelled of nothing; they passed colorless through life but for the bits of the living that they stole. Warmth stolen from living blood, scent from clothes made by living craftsmen, hearths aping human comfort they didn’t need, dead and frozen monsters that they were. 

“Lestat! You’re trembling.” Marius’ arms held him tight, pulled him into that firm lap as if he were a child again. “You see why I hid this. Why I ask you to trust me when I keep secrets.” 

“If…” he swallowed. “If that happens. I’d want it to be you.” 

“Shh. I would never wish that upon you.” 

“But if it did--”

Marius stole his words then with a kiss, one of only a handful of times they’d given in to the connection that had crackled between them before being so decisively interrupted. And Lestat responded hungrily, feeling again the emptiness yawning in him that none of his encounters in ages had been able to fill.

He’d loved, made love to, so many, but the  _ want _ was still there. Even with Amel present, wrapping him in love at every moment of every day, he still--

Innocent blood. The desire felt the same, never enough.

_ Maybe this time, _ Lestat thought as he fell backwards onto the modern foam mattress custom-fitted to the antique canopy bed.  _ Maybe with this man--the one I never had. _

Marius did not quite push him down, but followed a beat behind, taking a breath to look him over with an air of gratified inspection based on the quirk of his thin lips, the sparkle of his narrowed eyes.

It felt strange to be doing this with the lights on.

“Sweet boy.” Marius was doting even here, stroking his collarbone and running cool fingers down his chest. “How I’ve dreamed of you.” 

He choked back an unexpected sob. “You could’ve had me.” Could still, if that horrible vision came to pass. 

“You were too wild, then. Too hungry for the world. I could never have kept you; within months you would have tired of such a reclusive old man.” 

“Never!” he shot up, once again that young and foolhardy boy. “I never forgot about you. I dreamed of you too--when I thought I was dying, I…I didn’t want you to see me that way. But I dreamed of you, constantly.” 

He was rewarded with another kiss, expert enough to curl his toes and all-consuming. How simple it was not to think in this embrace. 

“Show me.” He gasped for air he didn’t need, gripping Marius’ hands as a lifeline. “If--If I turned. If I couldn’t--” 

“Lestat.”

“What would you do for me.” He made sure Marius’ eyes were on him as he brought those long fingers to his mouth and bit down, spilling blood not for food but the sight of it. “For your Prince.” 

A near-scowl flitted across that stone face, followed by an irresistible push against his shoulder. “Lie still.” 

There was something reverent, almost mystical in how Marius laid him out against the sheets, his hair arranged carefully against the pillow and hands folded over his chest as if he were the monster of the black-and-white screen. 

Last Marius laid a hand over his eyes and pressed them closed in a move more real than any stage business. A crest of light crushed in at his eyelids, and then that too was snuffed out. The darkness was total, and terrifying. A kiss muffled his scream, and hands held him until he stilled again.

“Hush,” Marius said again. Off came his carefully chosen cravat, his fine jewels; there was no rough passion in the touch as it pressed and folded those sumptuous garments. It was firm, detached, decisive, positioning him as though he were a beloved doll. He shivered, aware of his own nudity, wishing he could pose and preen or at least see if there was lust in Marius’ eyes. Had he done it well? 

Lestat’s ears were sharpened even beyond what the Blood had done to them--he heard Marius’ very muscles beneath his skin as the man moved across the room, as he touched papers and soft fabrics and lit candles. 

And then his footsteps ceased altogether. 

Lestat’s dead heart clenched. It could only be minutes passing. He was free to get up any time he wanted, he told himself, to prowl this kingdom that was his. All it would cost him was this rare chance, the possibility in all eternity that Marius might desire him. So he lay there, feeling himself shrinking inside his own skin. He was once more becoming that husk that Louis had slipped into the swamp, that had fallen broken from the tower.

He’d taken to checking his little golden device compulsively for the time. Now his hand itched for it (no no no--) but found nothing. Only himself, and eternity, and the Dark--

“Prince.” Smoky incense tinged the air, accompanied by soft and reverent steps. 

_ Marius! _ He wanted nothing more than to call out, but his throat was frozen. His transformation was so complete, it was as though Marius had worked magic.  _ Marius, where did you go, I-- _

Something tickled the bridge of his nose, his cheeks, his shoulders. It brushed him clean with relentless delicacy, and above it he could hear Marius’ silence still. 

There was a scent in the air, cloying and rich with spices Lestat had never tasted in life to know their names. And then, from nowhere, Lestat felt a cold, hard rod with a slight furrowed texture stroke across his forehead.

It left behind a streak of cloying, fragrant liquid, which dripped slowly towards his temples and hairline.

And as Lestat began to comprehend, the rods--fingers that had been in existence, slowly changing, for more than two thousand years--made their way along his arms, his legs. They striped his belly and the bottoms of his feet, and in each place they left behind cool trails of perfumed oils. They tucked his genitals neatly between his thighs, and some bit of cloth so light as to seem mist settled over his crotch in afterthought modesty.

The flats of the palms came next, pushing down wide and slow on his flesh like weights. The massage moved the oil about over his own poreless and hardened flesh, coating it without absorption, spreading thinner on each pass.

He must’ve glistened like the muscle men he’d caught on television, absurd and enticing in their oily strength. Mr. Universe. He laughed, thinking of himself striding up to the stage and besting them all with his thick calves and wiry torso. Marius pressed harder. 

“I’m sorry, I--” he managed to get out. It was so strange to have Amel apart from him, to feel so caged within his body, at someone else’s mercy. He could feel a little thrill, thinking of it like that. Even blinded, immobile--for as he made to raise his limbs he found them unspeakably heavy, and more raw with feeling than they’d ever been.  _ You’re playing tricks on me _ . 

Lestat was weighted with a sense of placidity, a reminder in each calming stroke that this was what he had asked. This was what it was to be adored. Marius began to speak of the night, the things he’d seen, in sumptuous detail. Was it only a projection of Lestat’s mind that made the pleasantries ring heavy? Made each word creep up his thighs and down his throat, invading him? It made Lestat’s very bones ache and his veins cry out. He was starving like this, here in the dark. 

“The power in your limbs could crush me as if I were nothing.” Marius was lifting him up, posing him against the bed’s lavish pillows so he seemed to lounge. “You are a god here in your kingdom. We owe our all to you.” 

How he ached, muscles taut, longing for Marius to pounce on him and have done with it. The heat of that wise gaze was on him now, admiring. But it never ignited.

This wasn’t what he wanted. Not this, adored but untouched. A gulf he couldn’t see between himself and all he loved, clawing him down into the endless, lonely dark--

“Well?” The illusion broke as he exploded forward, the drapes slipping from his eyes and his lap. “Am I beautiful? Irresistible?”

“Unspeakably.” Marius was indeed looking at him--fully clothed, unruffled. 

“You seem to be resisting.” He sulked. Naked, offering himself, and still he moved Marius not a bit. 

“You asked me for something. I have attempted to provide it.” 

He was so reasonable, always so eminently reasonable. Lestat loathed that about him. 

“But this is not--all you used to do, in your time with the Parents. Is it.” He looked up from under his eyebrows, feeling that residue of anointing oil slick and smooth running down, down to coat his very inhuman eyeballs in a thin miasma. “Or rather, there were compensations.”

Marius’ jaw tightened, as though Lestat had been somehow indelicate by mentioning on his own the thing Marius had discussed so freely on their first meeting. As though Marius had not been the one to  _ offer _ their Queen’s blood to foolish and random strangers, when he judged them possibly worthy.

That blood, what remained of it and its power, rested now in Lestat, and he had his own voice and will to offer it.

“Drink, Marius,” he said in a performance of authority. “You must live many thousands of years for me, after all.”

Marius’ hand was not gentle, when it hooked beneath the bone of Lestat’s jaw. Every fossilized scribe-callus strove to imprint his marble flesh. It did not need to be gentle, for Lestat was beyond all limits, impervious. His neck felt so long, though, so vulnerable and humanlike, as his most trusted advisor stretched it up and over in a movement suffused with the practice of millennia.

“Quiet,” was the last word spoken against his slow-thrumming vein before he got what he’d come here for.

Lestat had grown strong on Marius’ blood, when he was plucked from his rest and rebirthed into the night. But never had a return been asked of him, and he knew now it was because such a thing would have destroyed him. 

His bones were falling to pieces within his skin, his every inch winnowed down and fed into the great sucking need that wove through him and  _ demanded _ . There was no refusing it; had he tried, he would only have struggled and lost against an implacable vortex. They called him a prince, a god, but he was a powerless doll in the grip that helped him. 

_ Marius _ . He groped for the tender figure within that implacable presence, the island that would see him through the torturously sensuous chills that wracked him. His limbs shuddered and spasmed, hips canted, desperate and yet unable to connect. He was alone, so alone. Even Amel had left him, abandoned him to stiffening limbs and blind eyes and this relentless, starving need that would go on until the end of time itself. 

A burning touch brushed his eyes, and kissed his lips, and then he was able to feel himself again. He lay now where he had longed to be, in his true father’s embrace. Protected. Relieved. Wrung out completely, unable to think beyond the smooth touch at his temple. He felt, at last, contained within his skin. 

_ You must not stop _ , he wanted to say, the pain already forgotten for the momentary peace that was in him now.  _ You must kill me this way, punish me, so that I can bear it _ .  

Madness came, always, in the whitewater torrent that was the joining. And it drained away every time, when the flow was reduced to a trickle like hydrants after a great city fire. The flavors, the textures, might stain for a brief time, but could never truly be held except during; even now Lestat lost the texture of it, feeling more a creeping lassitude and a temporary peace.

He wanted to say ‘thank you,’ but how could one possibly express so large a sentiment in such small ugly words, especially after all that came before?

So instead he simply gathered himself on the bed, elbows around his knees and hair falling to cover his face, and breathed through it before tugging on clothes over the remaining scum of oil.

Louis was asleep when he got back; it had taken most of the night, and for that, too, Lestat felt peculiar gratitude. Warmth seeped into his limbs from the beautiful shower Alain had made him, even as that other familiar heat returned to coil at the base of his skull and behind his eyes.

“Welcome back, love,” he whispered to himself-not-himself, gaze averted from the mirrored walls and palms determinedly flat against his own thighs.

The clawing hunger in their belly was his answer.


	3. Chapter 3

Sometimes Benedict wanted to blame the demon’s invasions for how he behaved. Rhosh had loved his gentleness, and this was not--that. Couldn’t the anger, the contempt, be caused by the monster scarring the inside of his mind?

It was a comfort, as much as the prospect of a holiday’s blessed exit from a dungeon had once been. (Though then, too, he’d ended up changed beyond his own recognition.)

One night he was wandering the gardens, alone as ever in this place of friendship and family, and he came upon them among the roses.

“I love you,” the Prince said to Louis, loud enough even for a human to hear. “I love you. You know I love you.”

_ Ah yes, _ a thing less living even than the blood-drinkers hissed,  _ And we all know how discriminating he is in his tastes. _ His embered eyes twinkled, smoke dribbling from between his lips.

Benedict ignored it, ducking into a darkened corner and pressed a hand over his mouth, eyes riveted to the moonlit scene.

“My heart is yours,” Louis said far softer, a breeze inside the walled courtyard.

The Prince held his man with a casual air of possession, but not the sort of familiarity that Benedict would have expected from two with their extensive history. Such short timelines, perhaps; not enough years to truly know one another.

But also the Prince did things--wrong, in a way that twisted Benedict’s stomach. He kissed, he toyed, but also he praised and turned his love like an object, and Louis responded oddly.

Whatever Louis’ other sins, selfishness in bed wasn’t one Benedict recognized. On the contrary, he always worked at pleasing Benedict, applying uncommon focus to the task. But here he sat passive, while the Prince pushed and posed and  _ experimented. _

“You like this, don’t you, Louis? Look at me.  _ Look _ at me.” That booming voice was fractious, almost shrill. “I’d never hurt you. I can’t do it without you. I need--” 

Benedict couldn’t tell whether Louis complied with that request; Lestat’s lusty moan could have meant either gratification or frustration.

_ We all know what he needs, _ the specter sneered,  _ and  _ you’re _ more able to give it than that one. _

Lestat kept his clothes on and stripped Louis bare in the dirt, and it should have been a vision of eroticism. Louis should have been panting, not cool and smooth as the surface of a pond. He maintained his composure even when Lestat took that cunning vein high up near the crease of thigh, where Louis had bitten Benedict not a month past. (Where Rhosh had loved to bite.) Louis gasped high in his throat, and it sounded like a sob.

And with every sweet endearment, every careful pet, Louis looked more like he did when taking a beating.

“My beauty.” Lestat’s right hand skated up from Louis’ pointed nipple to hover, trembling, for many seconds in the air by that lovely empty face.

_ What would you do here? _ The ghost asked with a bitter smile.  _ He’s so pretty, after all. Positively tempting. No wonder you put him through hell; he knows what he deserves. _

Benedict sucked his own knobby knuckle, gnawing the bone between his blunt front teeth rather than give himself the cut that would alert them to his bloody smell.

A sound rose up, like the snarl of a great cat. Lestat’s left hand was gripping the one that hung beside Louis’ face as its fingers twitched and spasmed. 

“Lestat?” Even Louis’ perfect mask was shaken by the sudden shift. “Lestat, can you hear me? Please--” 

“It’s fine.” Lestat ground out. He forced his hand down onto the stone, cracks webbing their way across the ground. “It’s...his little joke.” 

Louis began to push himself up, the smallest movement a panicked cataclysm after his quietude. “Perhaps we should--”

“No!” he snapped. “No, don’t. You can’t. You can’t go. I need you, Louis. I adore you. You know that.” The hands that had pinned Louis down turned to gentle caresses, the air filled with murmured reassurances. 

“Yes, Lestat. It’s perfect.” Louis was looking across the garden; Benedict froze, certain that piercing gaze was on him, or perhaps the thing that hung in the air, whispering in his ear like the crackling of bones on a fire. Then the copper tang of blood was in the air, and he barely escaped with his mind. 

 

~*~*~*~

 

“What are you after?” The garden was barely out of his mind when withering grey eyes pinned him to the spot, peeling him open without touching him at all. The Prince’s mother was more terrifying than he had reckoned.

His eyes darted back and forth, looking for an out. Trying not to wonder who or what was looking  _ at _ him. Why had she come to him now, of all times? 

_ She always had a talent for sticking her nose in _ . There was almost admiration in that sour voice.

Benedict struggled to put himself together, struggling for the right mask. “I came here to find shelter. Rhosh hasn’t been himself, and the broadcasts said everyone was welcome.” 

She waited until he was finished speaking before snorting. Unlike the rest of the court, her clothes were travel-worn and tattered. They looked lived-in, not chosen for effect (unless that  _ was _ the effect desired).

“You wander around alone, spending long hours in the libraries and in your rooms. Don’t make me ask again.” 

“I don’t know what you’re asking.” He struggled not to fidget. “Isn’t this place open to everyone, to do as they’d like?” 

_ She’ll hang you on that _ . The ghost clapped his hands together. The broken digits mashed like meat and clicked like bone. 

“The idiot routine is working for you better than most, but don’t think you can turn it on me. I’ve dealt with greater fools every day since I set foot on these shores,” she said. In three strides she closed the distance between them. “What is your business with my son’s lover?”

He wanted to freeze under her withering stare, but feigned pious ignorance instead. “I have no business, Ma’am. The Consort has been kind enough to welcome me.”

At that she drew back herself, fair brows beetling and mouth pursed. Her shoulders drew up into an unmistakably martial stance, some needle from his lips striking deeper than it had been meant. “And you? What kindnesses do you do him in return?”

Even the spirit was silent, frozen like a painting; even the plumes of smoke were arrested mid-waft.

Gabrielle was such a little thing, young and weak, but she could do such harm if she guessed and told.

“I--we talk. I listen,” he stalled for time, and to his surprise her features changed.

They did not grow softer, but infinitely more weary, the threat draining out to be replaced by resignation.

“That fool.” She shook her head and sent her cropped golden curls bouncing. Delicate fingers pinched her brow. “You may ‘listen,’ but do you hear? Do you understand?”

“As well as I can.” Which was to say, not at all. “He seems to speak in riddles at times.” 

“He would have to.” She sighed. “Listen to me. You put yourself in danger, having these-- _ conversations. _ If you’re discovered there are people who will come to his aid. That’s not a luxury you have.” 

He flinched. When they spoke of the elder de Lioncourt’s waspish tongue, they hadn’t conveyed the half of it. “I understand.” 

“Louis has already gone farther than he should.” He must have looked skeptical; her eyes narrowed. “You understand nothing.” 

“I know what he asks of me.” Horrible things, violent things, procured by bites and insults and lies. It was worse than Rhosh had ever been. Wasn’t it?

_ (Stop crying. It’s disgraceful. You’re an embarrassment to me.) _

“He’s learned too well what they ask of him here,” she said. “I doubt any one of them has seen what you have.” 

“That’s cold comfort.” 

“Hmph.” Some part of what he’d said had hardened her. Her words came few and final. “I wish you no ill will, but you and I are strangers. Don’t expect me to stick my neck out.”

Of course. Who would, for the bumbling idiot who had so many failures to his name? “I doubt I’ll ever truly be welcome here.”

“No,” she said, not unkindly. “But that’s not the black mark it might seem.” 

Something over his shoulder caught her eye, sparking a mercurial shift in her expression--sad, then bitter. “Dark thoughts have long shadows. Be wary of where your thoughts are coming from.” 

She clapped him on the shoulder, nodded, and was gone. 

 

~*~*~*~

 

He was still haunted by the sight of the garden, of Louis’ eyes seeing-and-not-seeing him and the overpowering, lustful scent of blood, when the news of publication began circulating the court. The fruit of Lestat’s labor had made its way to mortal ears, and thereby into the eager hands of the dead.  _ Prince Lestat. _

Benedict rediscovered himself there, filling in the gaps on the page with his own memory instead of careful inference. Somehow, for all that prying, Lestat had managed to inaccurately render him as a total idiot: a weeping puppet whose actions were the convenience of a brain addled by sentiment. And yes, there was Rhosh too, though Benedict shuddered to think how the Prince had managed  _ that _ perspective.

The worst revelation was: Amel could still look through their eyes at any time. Amel could see what they were doing, was capable of watching them--that creature who’d moved the Prince’s hand and twisted the Prince’s handsome face into a rage-rictus there on the floor of Paradise. Somehow Benedict had convinced himself that because it had taken Lestat as its new host, the nightmare was over. A cold pit formed in his stomach.

It could happen again. He could wake up again covered in blood and ash, mind blank and limbs no longer his own. The thought circled round and round in his head: as long as he remained something like alive, it had dominion, and it had a reason to punish him now. It had to have seen them. 

How dare Louis. How  _ dare _ he.

Benedict couldn’t get Louis alone fast enough, the night after he read the horrid little tome. For once it was he who ventured forth and caught his prey, leading a tame creature back to his chamber with a request to “discuss a book” (true enough). When the doors closed, he felt himself slide back behind that sheet of rage he’d never felt back home at Rhoshamandes’ castle, before the demon that ruled this place got in his head. This was different from the numb cold that had protected him in Maharet’s garden. This was dangerous in its uncaring.

(And in the corner, that half-seen shade lingered, rust-and-fire eyes unblinking.)

“How dare you,” he hissed, Louis’ jawbones hard in his hand as he forced eye contact with sparkling green emptiness. “I thought we were safe, and now--you’re endangering me like this, just because your panting lust is unsatisfied even by your  _ Prince!” _

Something cracked, but the garbled groan he heard was not entirely pained. He knew what that sounded like in so many shades from this man--this--

_ Slut, _ he shouted silently, his intangible companion’s lips mum.  _ Faithless, needy whore. Hazard. _

Louis’ knees buckled in perverse gratification, but Benedict had more than plenty strength to keep him aloft by the throat rather than let him escape the meeting of their gazes. He dangled like so much twitching meat. Under his fingers, Benedict could feel the jaw rearranging itself. Healing. He squeezed down harder, forced the bone fragments to fight his touch. “It could be here right now, couldn’t it? Is that why Lestat makes you avert your eyes in public?”

At that Louis’ eyes widened in a panic Benedict had never before seen, and he wriggled like a frantic eel. “Nn--nnn! Nn-n!”

It was the most resistance he’d ever shown within this awful space, and so Benedict released him to crumple hard on the restored, anachronistic floor.

He didn’t even catch himself mid-air by flight, the very smallest effort.

_ I should kick him _ . The thought drifted into Benedict’s head as gently as snowfall on the hills outside.  _ He’s perfect to kick, like this. _

_ Or cut off his hand. _ (Justice, or something like it--take from Lestat’s lover just as Lestat had taken from poor, foolish Rhosh.) The ghost’s lips quirked, revealing a flash of fang.

Below, on the floor, he heard a thin keening, which developed slowly into a mass of misshapen words. “He doesn’t--he doesn’t--it leaves me alone because it hates me. I’m not one of you, it’s safe. It doesn’t…”

The belly felt soft, unprepared for the impact of his foot, but at least the words stopped with a  _ whoof _ .

“Liar.”

Louis coiled sinuously at the word, blood spicing the air.

“It isn’t a lie.” There was newfound iron in his voice as he coughed and crawled, bloodstained and pathetic as Benedict had ever been. 

“Yes it is.” Benedict grasped Louis’ wrists, rolled and dragged him on his back before tossing him onto the bed. “He loves you beyond all reason. He’s probably watching us now…”

Someone was, anyway. Dead and evil and ugly.

Sweet Benedict, saintly Benedict, come on his knees to beg forgiveness. First for his brothers, then for his master. Who would he ask for this, this sickly raging violence in his chest? He turned his eyes to the ghost. 

_ You don’t need my help, _ it said with half a smile, lips catching fire and peeling back to reveal fangs set in blackened gums.  _ You did it without me before _ . 

_ When Maharet stood before you, helpless _ . Louis was helpless now, prostrate and bleeding. This specter couldn’t possibly know about the past.

_ When those fledglings squished beneath your feet. Didn’t you remember some of it? _ It could be Amel, couldn’t it? Here now without him noticing, moving his hands. 

What were they made of, their lot? What was there when the blood ran out, and left only their regrets?

“Ah!” Louis’ groan had become a scream, but it felt so very far away. 

Would there be some part of them that could be good, could be useful at last, when they were reduced to their component parts? 

It was becoming difficult to gain purchase with his hands. They were slipping, and there was noise, the same as there had been around him in the city. Screaming. Not lustful but anguished. 

Beneath him the eyes were hard to see. They were smoking, rusty-green. A double image, one writhing and one recoiled. Both begging and evil and sad. 

Only one beating organ, slick and sheltered by shattered bone. 

_ You have my heart-- _

It looked normal. Beautiful, even, red and shiny as rubies as it slowly flexed and contracted. Red as tears. It didn’t look twisted or diseased, and it didn’t flinch from Benedict’s hand when he stretched out a single finger to stroke the hard-muscled side. It just beat on, oblivious to its own vulnerability.

The ghost had vanished, leaving only Louis, whose face was streaked with tears in every stage from fresh to flaking brown.

It wasn’t as ugly as it should be, despite the weakness, despite the purpled swelling over the jaw and one cheekbone moving autonomously back into shape. Benedict only looked away when he felt an insistent sucking press below, and saw flesh trying vainly to knit around his invading digit.

The groan Louis made then, when he pulled free, was as much a confusion as any of their interactions.

“I’m…” He wanted to apologize with the departure of the rage and fear that had been directing him, but he wasn’t sure he was sorry. The leaden dread in his stomach remained, trebled even by this violence and its sure repercussions.

“Come here.” Though tight with pain, there was some odd calm in Louis’ voice. “I’ll tell you something.” 

“More lies.” Benedict’s voice was thick, throat knotted, and yet he drew nearer in the bed they’d both destroyed. The body they’d both destroyed. “You warned me I couldn’t trust you.”

A soft, helpless laugh carried the answer through wry lips: “I lied.”

“Sinner.” Benedict’s kills had had patterns when Rhosh commanded it, when the new terrible Prince did, too. Surely Louis would be a proper target, evil and fragrant as a poisonous fruit.

Delicious.

“Yes. But I still know something you don’t. Something that will reassure you.”

He was a tempter, a needy creature who would sell himself for anything. For the strangest things. He flinched from Benedict’s tenderest touch. The ribs were still slightly caved in and purpled on one side. They shifted when pressed.

“Have you any loyalty at all?” he asked instead of pursuing the bait. “Any love in your heart, any respect for things greater than yourself?”

“I’d never tell you that.”

He kissed Louis’ awful mouth for that, a reward or a punishment for the truth. “You’re not worth the danger.”

“I agree.” He put his fingers to Benedict’s mouth; they felt spongy, bending even between the joints. “But let me give you this. Do with it what you will.” 

He’d been so convinced he and Louis were alike, lost souls looking for some cause to pledge themselves to. But that Louis had vanished and left a stranger beneath his touch. His hands didn’t stop moving, but he nodded. 

“He can’t see through my eyes,” Louis said, closing them as he did. 

“That’s impossible. We’re connected, all of us.” It had sounded so beautiful to him once. 

“I’m telling you I’m not.” He spasmed as Benedict pressed a tentative hand to that blotchy violet skin. “Even among our lot, it would seem I’m damned.” 

“No more riddles!”  

“I would have assumed you could guess.” He had the gall to look disappointed as he reached up to stroke Benedict’s curls. “I’m told it was a matter of grave scandal, when I went into the sun.” 

They had kept to themselves in those days, him and Rhosh. He’d heard nothing, knew nothing. He might well have been bound and gagged for all he knew of these people. 

“No? Regardless, you see what I mean.” 

“I don’t. You killed others, took them with you?” It wasn’t nearly so satisfying to see him flinch now. Benedict was tired, and the night had only begun. 

“You aren’t so well studied as I thought,” Louis said. “Should I repeat the details of my suicide?”

“Certainly you should tell me how you returned.” 

_ “Part _ of me returned, because Lestat willed it; he poured blood over my ashes and kept me from returning to dust.” His eyes were very, very green, and as full of secrets as a fairy glade. “But something died. Something goes, when we burn in the sun as we’re meant to. And now, Lestat’s demon has no dominion in my head, and so it longs to devour me entire instead.” He turned his perfect face away, and a fresh redness lined his lashes apropos of nothing. “You’re in no danger from touching me, Dom Benedictus.”

It should have disgusted Benedict, the mess, but instead he was moved to kiss away the blood tears like trails down a miraculous Mary. To croon softly as he brushed long, black curls sticky with grief back from the healing face, the lips with their fresh pink scars.

They didn’t sing like this anymore; chants were an old, old practice, gone long before the pitiful creature he held ever walked under the sun. But it seemed the only healing he could conceive, now that he’d finally broken something dear and foreign with the banked rage of a thousand years’ servitude.

Louis shivered in his hands, but protested none of it, not even the caresses. Such a twisted soul, to beg pain but need tenderness beaten in by force.

“Was it dangerous, when they brought you back?” 

“It…” Louis stared at him. “Why do you mock me?” 

“I’m trying to understand. Did it take too much blood?” No one would pour out that precious life force for him. Not before, and certainly not when they saw Louis like this. He looked so fragile, enough for Benedict to draw him close and stroke his hair.

“It’s no small wonder it was priests given the duty of confession, and not monks.” His muscles were tense. “Surely you know your mortal sins, after all these years.”

Of course he remembered.Those manuscripts had been his poetry, his soul. He wracked his brain, afraid to reach out lest he tempt those eyes on all of them. It dawned slowly. “Because you sought to end your pain?” 

“You do mock me.” 

“It is a sorrow to be mourned, perhaps.” Some of the books he’d pored over had touched on the idea that suicide was a great evil, more so than the slaughter of others, but he had assumed it a minor modern folly, not some solid Truth to these newer people. “And a great blessing, if you believe in such, that you are with us still.” 

“You are impossible.” Louis’ posture shifted. He was leaning heavily against Benedict’s side, not a calculated artifice of seduction but exhaustion. The heaviness that plagued him seemed...not gone, but lessened. 

“Aren’t we all?” he mused nonsensically, just to keep the volleys going. “You most of all, perhaps.” The loll of Louis’ head on his breast was a limp and unthreatening weight.

“I’m all too ordinary a sinner, and always will be.”

“No. Because I must ask--if you will answer truthfully. Why? Why do you do this to yourself?” He licked his own thumb and used it to swab away a bit of drying blood from the corner of Louis’ mouth. “To me? Haven’t you someone who loves you to keep you safe?” 

“Those who love me I don’t have. They are far from me, if they still exist. And the one I have is…” He swallowed, a thirsty sound. “My Lord Amel keeps me safe, always.”

“Why must you say its name?”

“Afraid there’s a charm on it, to alert him?” His smile was minutely cruel with a reference whose import Benedict did not know. “I thought you hated him, and wouldn’t mind… indulging me. Perhaps I’ve been indulged too often, of late.”

“I never wanted to hurt anyone.” He was weary in his soul of violence and death. 

“You take considerable pains to hide that fact.” 

“Sometimes there are things that must be done.” It was all he could say. “We do what we must.” 

Louis chuckled bitterly. “Perhaps you understand after all.” They lay beside one another, quiet, for a while. Then Louis shifted and asked. “Does it feel lighter, now?”

The question took him aback. “...I don’t know.” 

“You are so angry, my friend. And I deserve anger. I thought we’d be a match.”

“I’m not angry,” he said, only feeling the lie of it many months into this dance. Louis did him the courtesy of a simple quirked smile. “I’m--not angry at  _ you.” _

“Except when you are.” He was so eerie, sitting with his his legs up, arms wrapped about his knees and face mostly buried in the crook. Every bone of his ribs and spine stood out like the relics of a saint.

“I’m  _ not _ safe with you,” he said. “You may be a separate man, but it could still come for me. It has before.”

“I know it,” Louis said. He had the grace to avert his gaze. “I’m afraid I have no other solution to offer you.” 

“What will happen to you?”

“Me? Nothing. It’s not permitted.”

He saw again that spasm in their Prince’s hand, the confused demands for worship from one who had never given it so willingly as Benedict--

“And this is?”

“Of course not. But that’s all the more reason I crave it. Your hands are hard, when you want them to be.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m not.” Louis’ green, green eyes shone, and Benedict wanted to look away, for fear that something evil would see them and move him to apparently-desired violence.

Not that he could shift the blame for what he’d done so far, all by himself.

“You said…” he sighed. “Long ago, you said you were the one who told Lestat which questions to ask."

Months. A moment.

"I've some familiarity with the process." Louis’ tone was wry to the point of irritation, but Benedict forced himself past both that and the laconic, worldly condescension to try and grasp the meat.

"And this book is the result."

Louis half-turned, feet on the floorboards and testing gestures measuring how well the healing ankles could bear weight.

"They'll never believe me to be even the slightest threat,” Benedict prodded.

"Funny how that works."

He chewed the inside of his cheek. “You’re positively infuriating, you know.”

“I rather counted on it, my friend. I’ll be going.” Louis gathered his clothes, putting them on with a relaxed, practical air at odds with the wreckage around them, and the wreckage within him. Benedict watched him numbly, thinking of what he’d done not an hour before. There had been no demon to blame. It was all him, rending and screaming and--

He was lighter, in some terrifying way. There was some small piece in the corner of his soul that was his. 

“Will I see you tomorrow night?” He asked, halting and hesitant.

“Of course.” That smile. That smile could drive one to madness. “I do want to hear your thoughts.” He picked up the book forgotten on the bedside table and pressed it to Benedict’s chest. “So few wish to speak honestly, least of all with me.”


	4. Chapter 4

Amel came and went, as was his prerogative--and though Lestat loved him (needed him, felt through him the numinous connection to every other precious undead soul in his Court), at the same time, those absences were not entirely unwelcome.

Some things were easier, when he was out from under Amel’s warmth.

He could be more natural with Louis, for instance, could be close to him occasionally without the driving hunger Amel seemed to stoke.

_ (It wasn’t that he didn’t love Louis, didn’t want him always, always, didn’t need him for all eternity. But when they were together, all three alone, the impulses of Amel left him starved and drained at once.) _

_ (Amel.) _

_ (It was Amel, most certainly.) _

And it felt… freeing, also, to keep Marius just for himself, a separate thing for those separate times, though they were so very predicated upon the reality and potential of Lestat’s communal body.

Louis didn’t ask what kept him; he was simply there, always. Not like the days of their little family, when he would purse his lips and ask where had Lestat been, and with whom, and what had he taught Claudia by being so inconstant. Then, Louis had been at him always, needling; scowling at slights intended and un- (radiant like the moon in his small joys, laughing as they argued over something trivial, just as fiery in his defiance even if it was burning coals rather than an inferno). 

Easier now, with his pleasant smiles and pleasing form (it wasn’t the same, quite, as when Lestat and Claudia had bullied their drab third to dress his finest, to parade along the streets as a true unit). Careful to assure him that things were well, and the past was behind them, and there was no need to argue anymore. His Louis had no cross word to say.

But this was love, surely. Smoothed by time, gentle and familiar. Just what he needed.  

What he needed. 

For the ache in his heart, his Louis. 

For the unquiet in his head, Marius. 

He had made it through the early evening with a simple tremble in his troubled hand. 

_ Worms _ , Amel sneered.  _ Mindless sycophants _ .

_ You’re only bitter you can’t take me in your arms _ . He turned his mouth smoothly toward his hand. He was sure, but. Well. 

_ If I crushed a few of these fools, I could build a fine enough body _ . 

They were killers, all, he knew that. But Amel’s talk of violence always chilled the corners of his mind, like sitting in the Witch’s Place.  _ Why, when you have the best? _

He was alone again quite suddenly, which was how he knew he’d won. He smirked to himself, smug in his victory, turning with witty charm to the next guest. They were young, there at their mentor’s side. Beautiful, with that unsure smile. 

_ Take them as tribute. Your Prima Nocte _ . He could snap them up before anyone noticed their absence, crush their cries in his mouth. Or he could demand it be done, and watch the realization that this was no whim. Who would possibly refuse him?

Who could?

Those thoughts must’ve been Amel’s little trick; but there was no warmth at his neck, and it sounded like his own voice. He felt the cold mountain winds at his shoulders, the heady echo of cold fresh wine he’d long forgotten, the monster he’d absolved. He was shivering with cold, unable to escape himself. Himself, god. 

His face was refracted in a hundred polished surfaces, vicious and perfect. He made excuses, perhaps. He was certain he vanished in all but a puff of smoke, unable to bear the eyes on him. Grey, mutable by a trick of the light. 

He would have pounded at Marius’ door, in another life. Now he could simply explode into the little sanctum, try to hide himself in the bedclothes like a child. 

There was no risk of disturbing anyone else, here; Marius kept no other lovers at Court, shunning even the lovely Bianca’s persistent advances in favor of his ‘duties.’

Lestat was not so foolish as to reject that designation.

He lit the small ceramic fireplace, activated the artificial candles in their sconces, and left his courtly effects in a small heap on an imitation Louis XIV chair carved by one of Alain’s small army.

Dressed only in his briefs, he reclined on the bed with one leg drawn up and an arm across his face. The sheets smelled of cedar chips, herbs, and faint hints of washed-out blood; nothing human. Nothing living.

Nothing for which hunger curled low in Lestat’s belly, a tugging string.

His fingers twitched sluggishly; he ignored it. His neck was cold, the only heat coming from the false fire across the room.

“Modeling?” Marius’ voice sounded so casual, as if he normally came to his rooms halfway through the evening still dressed in his finery. He smelled of parchment and stability, a noble statue granted clemency from the curse of silent stillness. Lestat wanted his secrets, the way to keep himself from ossifying inside while his limbs walked.

The retort he’d begun to fashion crumbled on his tongue, and it must have shown in his eyes--Marius glided across the floor in a blink and gathered him close, pressing Lestat’s face into the luxurious fabric of his clothes. 

“Help me,” he was able to say, clinging to the last rock in the deep and fathomless ocean. 

Dutifully, Marius pressed his lips to that sacred fount at Lestat’s throat, but now it left him shuddering for new reasons. Marius, reasonable Marius, would reassure him that it was alright, that he was only becoming as he was meant to be. But what if... 

_ What if Marius _ saw. Those horrible thoughts, the ones that looked and talked like his but couldn’t be. “Wait--”

A wave of reassurance crested over his head. It would be alright, just like it always was. This was what needed to happen. And true enough, the yet-unconsummated pressure on his skin made him shiver. Already he was becoming pliant in those dear arms. But…

He shifted restlessly, burrowing closer to Marius and locking his hands together to hide the kind of tremors he hadn’t felt since his first month on that tiny Paris stage, when he’d feared the judgment of vulgar masses now rotted to nothing.

“Thank you, Marius. You’ve no idea how tired I am.”

A dry laugh rumbled Marius’ chest. “I have some idea. You must hardly be able to move, with that weight on you every night.”

Lestat held back tears at that, because of course that was it. That was why he was here.

“But I  _ can _ move,” he said with a brave smile, the one that hid his teeth and showed his charms. “And I’d love to show you.”

He ran his unsteady hands up Marius’ lapels, feeling the contrast between the velveteen jacket and the silk-knit turtleneck beneath, all wrapped around something harder and heavier than any mannequin. The nipples alone interrupted the smoothness of his chest, like misplaced beads poking through. There was some pleasure in rolling them between two knuckles, feeling stone shift for Lestat’s touch.

And then that stone became an avalanche, sending Lestat crashing back onto the bed he was learning so well.

“Ohhh.” His hands scrabbled against the marble of Marius’ shoulders. He felt dizzy, free in a way he couldn’t be as Lestat, the seducer. 

“This is hardly behavior fitting a prince,” Marius chastised him, smacking a red welt across his thigh that lasted precious seconds before being swallowed up by perfection. 

“I never asked for this,” he challenged, longing to feel another sting. “Every night I wake thinking I might walk into the desert again. Or spirit Louis to a dark dungeon where none shall ever find us, and keep him for eternity. Or slay us all individually, like Armand’s theatre.” Anything that would make it stop; that would let him glance into a mirror.

“Wicked.” Cold hands at his ribs, his ass, squeezing the heavy sack that hung useless between his legs (though never its neglected companion, which he had once caught Marius regarding with a curl to his lip). 

“You would come after me, wouldn’t you?” In truth he had waited for Marius to find him as he wandered the earth, to somehow reverse the alchemy of his youth. But there had been nothing, until they had all demanded him at once. And now he was needed. Precious. Marius  _ couldn’t  _ be rid of him. None of them could. 

“I would break your legs.” The groaning pressure on his bones was heaven, if such a place would have him. His legs were being pushed up, up, as though Marius was going to throw them over his shoulders and have Lestat in the mortal way. Up until Lestat’s tendon’s cried, and snapped, and he was helpless (a guise, only a guise). “To punish your foolishness. And bring you back in irons to my quarters.” 

“And then?” Being bound had always sparked wildness in him, a growing need to escape at any cost, but it made his new coffin of flesh ache. His beloved prison, gifted to him first by Akasha. Already his muscles were healing themselves, destroying his illusions. 

Marius cuffed him like a kitten, forcing him to roll onto his stomach and press his face into the sheets. The old, dying instinct for air made him struggle, but that implacable hand held him at the neck until he stilled. His reward was punishment--a sucking, unbearable pressure first at his shoulder, then his spine, moving down by inches in a manner that would have drawn blood by any less careful master. Marius let him writhe, begging breathlessly for release. 

How could it be that this inhuman passion heated him better than the fireplace, almost better than the sun? His flesh felt warmed at last, with no prey in sight, and his hands clutched helplessly at the sheets.

Warring instincts wormed inside him, confusing because this was so  _ perfect _ \--so much a thing Lestat had enjoyed long, long in the past before he became too overwhelming for anyone to properly hold down again. Ages ago; but the strong hands that had done it had gone to ash in some grotesque old ceremony Lestat missed out on.

_ (Lestat had hated it, too, but that had been a separate thing. Never all at once, even if the memories sometimes muddied--And he knew better now, had forgiven that spirit--These sheets were fresh.) _

But now his body shook with what must look like St. Vitus’ Dance, limbs animate beyond his will as when a little human felt nerves. That teasing mouth felt icy against Lestat’s flaming skin, and when Lestat moaned wide into a pillow he received a choking mouthful of goosedown as his reward, spilling forth thanks to his clumsy fangs.

He choked pointlessly--he could walk across the ocean floor and never suffer, could go to the moon and stare at Earth with frozen features--hacked, and spat, and then Marius said some little inconsequential thing in his ancient voice.

_ No.  _ No _. Not him--I don’t like him, we never liked that one-- _

The words came forth unbidden, from that heat Lestat had ignored, and it was moving his  _ mouth _ \--

“Stop! This isn’t the one I want--I’ve seen him too much, she hated him, too, it was cold there and we couldn’t mo--”

“Hmm.” Marius let out just that one sound, and then the hard hand on Lestat’s neck pressed down imperceptibly heavier.

They--Lestat and Amel--let out their own sound, inhuman and awful; they heard glass shatter before a great, muffling silence descended over all.


End file.
